


States of Inelegance

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [96]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avenger Loki (Marvel), Avenger Reader (Marvel), Avengers Tower, Comfort, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Avengers, F/M, Fluff, Heat Stroke, Hot, Protective Loki (Marvel), Reader-Insert, Stark Tower, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:55:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24990406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: When the air conditioning in the Tower breaks down, the Avengers have to get creative in order to stay cool. Loki is a little more...composed.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [96]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 14
Kudos: 316





	States of Inelegance

Loki had cold hands. It was kind of just his Thing. When you’d first discovered that, you’d been absolutely horrified, and you could remember (with heat in your cheeks) how you’d reacted the first time. You’d been on a mission together, along with Thor and Steve, and it was bitterly cold. It was your turn to play support, holed up in a tiny shed alongside Loki, and at some point in the night, he’d passed you something you needed. His fingers were like ice. You could still remember how you gasped and dropped the piece of equipment in favor of reaching out to grab his hands so you could bring them to your mouth and try to warm them with your breath. It didn’t feel like normal...coldness. Your hands were cold, of course, because all of you was cold, but Loki’s skin was...something else. Maybe you’d mumbled something about how he was freezing, and how he should have said something, and then clutched his hands to your chest in hopes of giving him some of the very-little warmth you had.

For several long moments, he’d only looked at you. At the time, his face had seemed unreadable but, with time and distance from the situation, you figured he’d looked amused. Then he’d laughed quietly at you and told you that he simply ran colder than you did, and he was fine. Oh. He hadn’t tried particularly hard to pull his hands away from you, though. Still, you’d apologized fiercely and released him. It made sense to you, that of course an Asgardian being would be different from humans, but...you’d never really given it much more thought than that. Thankfully, he’d never given you a hard time for your silly reaction. If anything, it seemed to warm him to you.

When you got back to the Tower, some small silly part of you wanted to avoid him. But he didn’t let that happen. Slowly, you began to spend more time together—and not just sitting quietly in the same room, either. Once, in the middle of the night, he’d come to your door and asked if you were willing to help him get back at Thor for something or another. Of course you were. So you’d stalked through the Tower with him, in your pajamas, trying to be even half as stealthy as he was. Looking back at it kind of made you laugh: of course he didn’t _really_ need a human’s help with anything, but you liked that he’d asked you nonetheless.

He started touching you kind of as a prank. Sometimes, in your quiet moments, he would sneak in ridiculously close to you and touch you somewhere. His hands were never much warmer than they’d been the first time you’d touched him. So you’d just be reading something, or working on paperwork, or even just zoning out and staring blankly at your phone, and suddenly you’d feel a block of ice press against some warm, vulnerable part of you. He liked to touch the back of your neck, or slip his hand just under the hem of your shirt to touch your side. Each time he did it, you jumped and made a noise disgustingly similar to a shriek, and he’d grin wickedly at you. Sometimes you chased him even though you knew he could outrun you at a moment’s notice. He’d lead you on a merry chase through the Tower, always keeping just the right pace so that you felt like you could catch him, but you never did. 

Eventually you wised up, a little, and took to chasing him just far enough to get the two of you somewhere more private, and then stopped in your tracks to shout at him that if he wanted to touch you, he was welcome to do it—you just needed a little warning first. 

That time, he’d stopped running. He was out of sight, of course, but you could hear the way he _didn’t_ move. You allowed yourself to imagine that he was taken aback by the confession, the permission, and the thought of that made you smile.

It didn’t change much, though: he still crept around and made you flinch and then laughed to himself before taking off to make you chase him again. 

It was one of the hottest weeks on record in New York, and it _sucked_. The air outside was hot and muggy, and any time you stepped outside, it felt like you were walking into a giant mouth. You tried not to think about it, but the air smelled like garbage, too: hot, rotting garbage. It was disgusting. As much as you liked getting outside to take in the sunshine and the fresh air, you had no choice but to hide yourself in the cave that was Tony’s enormous and almost-obscene giant building. The air conditioning was working _hard_ , but it kept things survivable.

Until it broke.

There’d been an explosion in Tony’s lab, bad enough to make the lights in the whole Tower flicker. The power went out, and everybody was trapped in solid darkness for several long minutes before everything slowly began to come back on. Well. _Almost_ everything. By now, you’d become so used to the sound of cool air blowing in through the vents that it took a few moments for you to figure out what was different about the sound of the building, but already the air felt a little bit thicker. 

He’d done something awful to the air conditioner.

When a group of you had gone down to the lab to find out _what the fuck_ , he’d rambled his way through some attempt at an explanation. Already there was a fine sheen of sweat on his face. His eyes had the wide, crazy look about them that told you he’d been down here for too long without sleep. He darted through his lab, playing with various monitors and pieces of equipment, and gave some explanation that made very little sense to you.

It wasn’t an easy fix, especially knowing that Tony was already so exhausted. Everyone wanted him to keep working until he could get the air running again, but you all also knew that he needed to take a break. 

For the first day, you kind of just tried to take everything in stride. The team had rounded up as many fans as they possibly could and set them up in the living room, and of course you’d opened every window that _could_ be opened in hopes of catching some kind of breeze from outside. No one was willing to cook anything, so you ordered pizza for dinner. It was hard to sleep, but you just locked your bedroom door and peeled off all of your clothes and dozed on top of your blankets.

The second day was a little harder. You wore as little as you felt like you could get away with and set yourself up directly in front of one of the fans in the living room with a glass of cold water and a long book. It felt weird to be so lazy, but the idea of working out or trying to get any other work done just felt impossible. Before bed, you took a long, cold shower, and it was almost enough to allow you to sleep.

On the third day, you kind of wanted to die. You weren’t alone. You could sit around naked in your own bedroom, but the fans in the living room, along with the larger space, made things feel so much more bearable. So you wore shorts and a tank top and tried not to think about how much you wanted to peel off your skin. The boys were lucky. They could walk around shirtless, no problem. So you were surrounded by gorgeous men and their glistening, rippling muscles, and you weren’t even in any kind of mental state to enjoy the sight because not only were these men your friends, but also you were close enough to heatstroke that it felt dangerous to try to entertain any of those thoughts anyway. 

You hadn’t moved from your place in front of the fan for hours, it seemed. You were in your chair with your head tilted backwards to rest against the back of it. The fan didn’t do a whole lot to actually cool you anymore, but feeling the air move against your skin was enough to keep your claustrophobia to a minimum. Some of the others were in the room with you, and you could hear them chatting quietly, but you didn’t really have the energy to join in. 

Something cool crept along your cheeks, lightly enough to warn you of its presence without shocking you with that first icy touch. It continued its path downwards, pressing itself against the sides of your neck a little more firmly now that you knew it was coming. You couldn’t hold back your moan, and even to your own ears, it sounded...well, kind of pornographic. You tilted your head back a little more, raised yourself towards the cold, and opened your eyes.

Loki was standing above you with his hands pressed against your neck. His eyes were wide, taken aback. Your cheeks burned _furiously_ but you couldn’t bring yourself to shrink away from him. The room was quiet except for the hum of all those fans. The others had stopped talking, probably around the same time that you’d moaned like something filthy was happening. 

“Sorry...” you whispered. “Just...that feels really good.”

His eyes remained a little wide, a little wild, but his lips curled into something approaching a smug smile. “Good.” He took a quick look at the others, and then jerked his chin towards the doorway. “Come outside with me.”

The thought of relinquishing this spot here, in front of the fan, pained you a little, but at this point you knew you’d follow Loki—and that icy touch of his—just about anywhere. So you pulled yourself to your feet with as quiet a groan as you could manage and followed him through the corridors to one of the balconies. The sun was setting, so, while the balcony wasn’t quite in shadow yet, it was at least out of the direct line of sunlight. 

It finally occurred to you, then, that this whole fiasco might have been more dangerous for Loki since his body temperature was so much lower than a human’s. You turned to study him. He was wearing more clothing than any of you had worn in days: a soft-looking t-shirt and some sort of thin pants. He hovered near the door, maybe looking a little more awkward than you’d ever seen him look. “Are you okay?” you asked. “How are you holding up? Are you overheating? Are you getting enough water?” Standing out here in the open air made it a little easier to think of someone other than yourself, and suddenly you felt incredibly guilty for not checking in on him sooner.

But he waved off your concerns as he sat down in the wooden lounge chair next to the railing of the balcony. “I’m fine. It’s you I’m worried about.”

A different kind of warmth flooded you at his words. At the thought of him thinking about you. You tried to keep your face neutral even as you shrugged of his concerns. “I’m fine too. And how much longer could it possibly take Tony to get things working again?” Maybe you didn’t really want to think about the answer.

As if he could read your mind, Loki smiled a little, and then looked out across the city. He kept his eyes fixed on some point far away even as he licked his lips to wet them and drew in a breath to speak. “I would like to offer you my services.” Had you ever heard him sound so...hesitant? His eyes flickered to your face so quickly that, if you’d blinked, you would have missed it, but then returned immediately back to the horizon. “You know that I run cooler than you. _I_ know that you mortals have such a thin range of temperatures at which you can thrive. I’m willing to touch you, if you’ll allow it. Maybe I can help cool you.”

He sounded...odd. It only took you a moment to figure out what it was: there was no bravado in his voice. Normally, he spoke with such confidence, like he knew that everyone’s eyes were on him and he was willing to give them a show. But here, he spoke only to you, and maybe, if his far-off gaze was any indication, he was...nervous about it? 

A rush of words sprang to mind. Assurances, mostly, that he didn’t need to worry about you, that you couldn’t ask him to do something like that. But you didn’t speak them aloud. Maybe there was something in the air between you right now that made you certain that he’d mistake those assurances for rejections. It was your turn to wet your lips, now, and you started to take a step towards him, but then stopped. “I wouldn’t want to make you get too warm...”

He looked at you again. His eyes were sharp as he took in the sight of you, and you were suddenly acutely aware of how little clothing you were actually wearing. But you fought your every instinct to cross your arms in front of yourself or tug at the hem of your shirt, unwilling to make him think he couldn’t look at you. After a few long moments, he smiled faintly and patted the chair between his legs. 

And what else could you do but join him? Still feeling awkward, but also a little embarrassed at your own eagerness, you took your spot there between his legs and stretched your own out in front of you on the lounge chair. You tried not to let your back go too straight, desperate not to let him know how awkward you felt, but then he wrapped his arms around your belly and pulled you backwards so that your back was flush against his chest. You sighed at the feeling. You could feel the coolness of his skin through his clothing. When he was sure that you were comfortable against him, he raised one hand to smooth it along your forehead. This drew another moan from your lips, and you heard him laugh and move to cover your cheek as though to lessen the heat that he knew would rise there. 

“Loki...” You breathed his name. There was so much you wanted to say to him right now, but where would you even start? You wanted to thank him over and over again, tell him how amazing he felt, tell him that this was perhaps the kindest thing anyone had ever done for you. You wanted to ask him a million questions—did the cold ever bother him? was this okay? was he _sure_ that you weren’t going to pour too much of your own body heat into him? “Oh my _god_.” Maybe that was the best you could do right now.

He laughed again—you felt the way his chest rose and fell with the sound. His other hand—the one still wrapped around you—slipped beneath your shirt. You did not flinch when he spread his fingers out against you, when he caressed the tender skin of your belly. “That can be arranged, darling.” His voice was low and thick. It made yet another kind of heat suffuse your body, but...you liked it. It was a perfect match to the lovely, delicious chills that he was sending through your skin. He tilted your head to the side and lowered his lips to brush against the skin of your neck. “All you have to do is ask.”


End file.
